Tisby cites this verse in the Prathia Hall section, where he describes freedom faith as God's work through the community of faith "to set the oppressed free."
Tisby opens with Ella Baker, who knew she would never lead from the pulpit or the podium because she was a woman, and then profiles six women whose faith put them in the movement's front ranks. The big ideas of the chapter:
Women were the backbone. Women made up the majority of participants and did much of the organizing, yet popular history centers men. Tisby draws on Danielle McGuire and Martha S. Jones to argue the story needs to be retold.
A double handicap. Black women faced racism in the nation and sexism inside the movement. Mary Church Terrell named it a double handicap, and Pauli Murray called it "Jane Crow."
A here and now faith. These women rejected a "by and by" faith that only waits for heaven. Their faith showed up in registration lines, church basements and picket lines.
Institution builders. They worked through church, the YWCA, the NCNW, SNCC, the Commission on Religion and Race, and even a town hall.
Plan for our time together
5 min Welcome and centering verse (Luke 4:18).
17 min Play the Here & Now interview (11:56) and take quick reactions.
15 min Tour the six women. Give each table or pair one woman and two minutes to report the takeaways.
5 min Look at the timeline: where do these lives overlap, and who was alive for the March on Washington?
15 min Discussion questions, starting with the first two and moving to our congregation.
3 min Closing: return to Luke 4:18.
The six women
In the order Tisby presents them. Dates and places were checked against the sources linked in each card, and any disagreement with the chapter or among sources is noted under "Source check."
Coretta Scott King
Her own person, before and after Martin
Born
April 27, 1927 Heiberger, Alabama
Died
January 30, 2006 Rosarito, Baja California, Mexico
Lived
78 years
Key takeaways
Tisby insists she be remembered as an independent person, not only as a spouse and widow. She formed her own convictions long before she met Martin Luther King Jr.
Her faith was tested early: white neighbors burned her family's home when she was fifteen, and after the January 1956 bombing of the King home in Montgomery she chose to stay.
After 1968 she built institutions. She founded the King Center, pushed for the King holiday, and spoke out on apartheid, women's rights, disarmament and LGBTQ rights.
Contribution in brief
Born on a Black-owned farm in rural Alabama, Coretta Scott graduated as valedictorian of Lincoln Normal School, earned a scholarship to Antioch College, and trained as a concert singer at the New England Conservatory in Boston, where she met Martin Luther King Jr. They married on June 18, 1953. She set aside a concert career, but never lost her love of music or her vision of the "Beloved Community," which shaped a lifetime of work for nonviolence.
Source check: Some sources list Marion, Alabama, as her birthplace. Heiberger is the farm community near Marion where her family lived.
October 27, 1922 Cleveland, Ohio (raised in Harlem, New York)
Died
June 11, 2014 New Rochelle, New York
Lived
91 years
Key takeaways
A painfully shy girl from Harlem who found her voice on stage, she treated her art and her activism as one calling. Tisby says each strengthened the other.
Faith shaped her conscience early. She credited her stepmother for steady attendance at Mother Zion AME Church and believed God had put her on earth for a purpose.
She and Ossie Davis, her husband from 1948 until his death in 2005, were friends of both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She spoke at the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage, and the couple served as masters of ceremonies at the 1963 March on Washington.
Contribution in brief
Born Ruby Ann Wallace, she joined the American Negro Theater, one of the few places where Black actors could explore race and the complexity of life as people of African descent in the United States. Her work includes A Raisin in the Sun, The Jackie Robinson Story, Do the Right Thing, and American Gangster, which brought an Oscar nomination. Coretta Scott King invited her to the advisory board of the King Center's Cultural Affairs department. Tisby notes that she prayed to be made so uncomfortable that she would do the very thing she feared.
Source check: Tisby says only "born in 1922 in Ohio." Britannica and other sources give Cleveland and October 27, 1922.
July 5, 1899 Marshalltown, Iowa (raised in Anoka, Minnesota)
Died
January 17, 1990 New York City (Harlem)
Lived
90 years
Key takeaways
She was the only woman on the March on Washington's administrative committee. She pressed, largely without success, for women to have a larger role on the program.
On the staff of the National Council of Churches' Commission on Religion and Race, she brought white Protestants into the movement. Tisby credits her with recruiting more than 40,000 to attend the March.
After the September 1963 Birmingham church bombing, her faith would not let her harbor bitterness toward anyone made in God's image, even white supremacists. She organized religious leaders to support the Civil Rights Act.
Contribution in brief
Raised in the only Black family in Anoka, Minnesota, she became the first Black graduate of Hamline University in 1922. She taught at Rust College in Mississippi, led YWCA branches, and in 1963 joined the Commission on Religion and Race. Tisby calls her a bridge builder: she helped arrange the meeting where A. Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King Jr. coordinated their separate march plans. Her coalitions backed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including the provision adding sex to its nondiscrimination clause, and she was invited to the White House signing.
Source check: Tisby says she grew up in Anoka; she was born in Marshalltown, Iowa. One National Park Service page misprints her birth year as 1889. Every other source gives 1899. The 40,000 figure is Tisby's and was not independently confirmed.
March 24, 1912 Richmond, Virginia (raised in Rankin, Pennsylvania)
Died
April 20, 2010 Washington, D.C.
Lived
98 years
Key takeaways
She led the National Council of Negro Women for about forty years, beginning in 1957. Her habits of faith and service began in a church-centered family that often spent entire Sundays at church.
A chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, she sat on the platform but was not asked to speak. The women then met to ask "After the March...What?" and insisted that women's concerns stay at the center.
She treated racial and gender justice as one struggle. She cofounded Wednesdays in Mississippi, which brought Black and white women from the North and South together.
Contribution in brief
As a teenager she won a national speaking contest, and she was admitted to Barnard College, but the dean turned her away because the school had already filled its quota of Black students. She earned a bachelor's and a master's degree at New York University. Working for the YWCA from 1937, she met Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt, helped the YWCA adopt its Interracial Charter, and became the first director of its Office of Racial Justice. The NCNW also supported Fannie Lou Hamer's pig bank. Her honors include the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1994) and the Congressional Gold Medal (2004).
Source check: Dates are consistent across sources. A National Park Service page lists a death date of March 25, 2010, which is the day she was admitted to the hospital. She died April 20, 2010. Sources differ slightly on when she left the NCNW presidency (1996 or 1997).
June 29, 1940 per Tisby (several sources say January 1, 1940) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died
August 12, 2002 Boston, Massachusetts
Lived
62 years
Key takeaways
Hall defined "freedom faith" as the belief that God intends us to be free and empowers those who work for freedom. For her, faith could not stay inside the sanctuary; it had to be practiced when danger was real.
As a SNCC field organizer in Terrell County, Georgia, nicknamed "Terrible Terrell," she survived a night when the home where she was staying was shot up by white terrorists.
Oral history suggests that her 1962 prayer at a vigil for burned Black churches, where she repeated "I have a dream," made an impression on Martin Luther King Jr., who later used the phrase.
Contribution in brief
A preacher's kid from Philadelphia whose father founded Mount Sharon Baptist Church in 1938, she suspended her studies at Temple University in 1962 to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She was ordained in 1977, one of the first women ordained in the American Baptist Church, pastored Mount Sharon, earned a PhD at Princeton Theological Seminary, and held the Martin Luther King Jr. Chair in Social Ethics at Boston University School of Theology. Tisby calls her a pioneer of womanism, theology rooted in the experiences of Black women. King is quoted as saying she was the one platform speaker he would prefer not to follow.
Source check: Birth date is disputed. Tisby and the published biography Freedom Faith give June 29, 1940. Wikipedia, the SNCC Digital Gateway and EBSCO give January 1, 1940. Everyone agrees on 1940. The "I have a dream" link rests on oral history and is hedged by Tisby himself.
Born U. Z. Brown to sharecropping parents, she left school after eighth grade and worked the fields into her thirties. The church, she said, was the one place that white people did not control.
One Sunday in 1964 at Moon Lake Missionary Baptist Church, SNCC workers came to teach rural Black Mississippians to register to vote. She stood up, and she later said she has been standing up ever since.
In 1976 she became the first Black woman elected mayor in Mississippi and served until 2001, bringing paved roads, streetlights, sewers and public housing to Mayersville.
Contribution in brief
Facing white men with guns, literacy tests and the loss of her job, she became a SNCC field organizer and a delegate of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, working beside Fannie Lou Hamer. She later served as housing coordinator for the National Council of Negro Women and, in 1973, traveled to China at the invitation of Shirley MacLaine, returning sixteen more times. In 1992 she received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship. Her memoir, Barefootin', was published in 2006.
Source check: Birth and death details agree across the Associated Press obituary, the Town of Mayersville and other sources. Her mayoral term of 1976 to 2001 matches Tisby.
Ella Baker (1903 to 1986): Opens the chapter. Her SNCC and SCLC work is the model of women leading from behind the scenes. She knew she could not lead from the pulpit or the podium because she was a woman.
Mary McLeod Bethune: Founded the National Council of Negro Women in 1935. Mentor to Dorothy Height.
Fannie Lou Hamer: Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party leader and friend of Unita Blackwell. Her Freedom Farm pig bank was supported by the NCNW.
Mary Church Terrell: Described the "double handicap of race and sex" that Black women carried.
Pauli Murray: An activist and a Christian who named this injustice "Jane Crow."
Photos: portraits of all six women are available on the pages linked under "Learn more" in each profile.
Timeline
Six lives, 120 years. The dashed lines mark the 1963 March on Washington and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. All six women were alive for both.
1900192019401960198020002020
1963 March on Washington
1964 Civil Rights Act
Anna Arnold Hedgeman
1899 to 1990, age 90
Dorothy Height
1912 to 2010, age 98
Ruby Dee
1922 to 2014, age 91
Coretta Scott King
1927 to 2006, age 78
Unita Blackwell
1933 to 2019, age 86
Prathia Hall
1940 to 2002, age 62
Events
Use the buttons to follow one woman or the broader movement.
1899
Anna Arnold Hedgeman
Anna Arnold Hedgeman is born on July 5 in Marshalltown, Iowa. Her family later moves to Anoka, Minnesota, where they are the only Black family.
1912
Dorothy Height
Dorothy Height is born on March 24 in Richmond, Virginia, and is raised in Rankin, Pennsylvania.
1922
Anna Arnold Hedgeman
Hedgeman graduates from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, its first Black graduate.
1922
Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee is born on October 27 in Cleveland, Ohio, and grows up in Harlem.
1927
Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott is born on April 27 on her family's farm near Heiberger, Alabama.
1933
Unita Blackwell
Unita Blackwell is born U. Z. Brown on March 18 in Lula, Mississippi, to sharecropping parents.
1935
Dorothy HeightMovement events
Mary McLeod Bethune founds the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), which Height will later lead.
1937
Dorothy Height
Height begins work at the Harlem YWCA, where she meets Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt.
1940
Prathia Hall
Prathia Hall is born in Philadelphia, where her father had founded Mount Sharon Baptist Church in 1938. Tisby gives June 29; several sources give January 1.
1948
Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee marries actor Ossie Davis. They remain married until his death in 2005.
1953
Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott marries Martin Luther King Jr. on June 18.
1955
Coretta Scott KingMovement events
The Montgomery bus boycott begins in December, and Martin Luther King Jr. becomes spokesperson for the Montgomery Improvement Association.
1956
Coretta Scott King
On January 30 the King home is bombed while Coretta and their infant daughter Yolanda are inside. Coretta decides to stay in Montgomery.
1957
Dorothy Height
Height is elected the fourth president of the NCNW.
1957
Ruby DeeMovement events
Ruby Dee addresses the crowd at the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in Washington, King's first address to a national crowd of about 25,000.
1960
Movement events
Students launch sit-ins across the South, and Ella Baker encourages them to form the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
1962
Prathia Hall
Hall suspends her studies to join SNCC in southwest Georgia. At a vigil for burned Black churches she prays aloud and repeats the phrase "I have a dream."
1963
Anna Arnold HedgemanDorothy HeightRuby DeeMovement events
August 28, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Hedgeman serves on the administrative committee, and Height is a chief organizer. Height sits on the platform but is not asked to speak. Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis serve as masters of ceremonies. Afterward Height and other women meet to ask "After the March...What?"
1963
Anna Arnold Hedgeman
In September, after four girls are killed in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Hedgeman mobilizes religious leaders to support the pending Civil Rights Act.
1964
Unita Blackwell
At Moon Lake Missionary Baptist Church, Blackwell meets SNCC workers and stands up to register to vote. She becomes a SNCC field organizer and a delegate of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic National Convention.
1964
Dorothy Height
Height helps organize a meeting in Atlanta of women's groups. It leads to Wednesdays in Mississippi, which she cofounds with Polly Cowan.
1964
Anna Arnold HedgemanMovement events
On July 2, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act. Hedgeman is among those invited to the White House ceremony.
1968
Coretta Scott KingMovement events
Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated on April 4. On June 26, Coretta Scott King founds the King Center in Atlanta.
1973
Unita Blackwell
Blackwell travels to China with Shirley MacLaine and eleven other women. She will return sixteen more times.
1976
Unita Blackwell
Blackwell is elected mayor of Mayersville, Mississippi, the first Black woman elected mayor in the state. She serves until 2001.
1977
Prathia Hall
Hall is ordained, one of the first women ordained in the American Baptist Church.
1979
Coretta Scott KingMovement events
A King holiday bill, first introduced in 1968 by Representative John Conyers, finally reaches a House vote and fails by five votes.
1983
Coretta Scott KingMovement events
On November 2, President Ronald Reagan signs the King holiday bill after years of advocacy by Coretta Scott King and others. The first national observance is in 1986.
1985
Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King and others are arrested at the South African embassy in Washington during an anti-apartheid protest.
1990
Anna Arnold Hedgeman
Anna Arnold Hedgeman dies on January 17 at age 90.
1992
Unita Blackwell
Blackwell receives a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, often called the genius grant.
1994
Dorothy Height
Height receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
2002
Prathia Hall
Prathia Hall dies on August 12 in Boston at age 62.
2004
Dorothy Height
Height receives the Congressional Gold Medal.
2006
Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King dies on January 30 in Rosarito, Mexico, at age 78.
2010
Dorothy Height
Dorothy Height dies on April 20 in Washington, D.C., at age 98. President Barack Obama speaks at her funeral.
2014
Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee dies on June 11 at her home in New Rochelle, New York, at age 91.
2019
Unita Blackwell
Unita Blackwell dies on May 13 in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, at age 86.
Rosa Parks is not profiled in Chapter 8, but her story gives context for the Montgomery bus boycott, the December 1955 protest that pulled Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr. into the movement's front ranks.
Anna Arnold HedgemanHidden Figures: Anna Arnold Hedgeman A short Black history month feature on her string of firsts, including being the only woman on the March's administrative committee.
Also worth knowing: the 2026 PBS documentary Of the People: Women of the Civil Rights Movement (about 54 minutes) profiles Ella Baker, who opens Tisby's chapter, along with Fannie Lou Hamer and others. PBS page
Podcast: Freedom's Daughters
"Freedom's Daughters": Journalist Celeste Headlee profiles her great grandmother and others
WBUR Here & Now, aired October 7, 2026. Host Robin Young talks with journalist Celeste Headlee. Runtime 11:56.
Freedom's Daughters: How a Generation of Black Women Resisted Oppression Through Literacy and Education by Celeste Headlee (Flatiron Books, published October 6, 2026). It centers on Headlee's great grandmother, Carrie Still Shepperson, born during the Civil War, who graduated from college, became a teacher, and gave her life to education and literacy for Black people in the South. According to the publisher's description, Headlee spent nearly a decade piecing together her story and those of the women who worked alongside her.
The segment comes from WBUR and NPR's Here & Now. The Connecticut Public page is a repost by an NPR member station.
Bridge to Chapter 8
Carrie Still Shepperson taught freed people to read after the Civil War. A century later, Unita Blackwell faced a literacy test at the registrar's office. How are literacy and the vote connected across those two eras?
According to the publisher, Headlee spent nearly a decade recovering her great grandmother's story. Tisby says the movement's story has been told mostly through men. What does it take to recover a history that was never written down, and who decides whose story is recorded?
Several of Tisby's six women were teachers (Hedgeman at Rust College, Hall at seminary, Height as a young Bible teacher). What is the role of teaching in the work of freedom?
Who in our own families or in our congregation's history carried this work without being named?
Discussion questions
Moving from understanding, to personal reflection, to communal accountability.
Understanding
Tisby says women were the majority of the movement's participants yet were often kept from the pulpit and the platform. Which of the six profiles shows that gap most clearly, and how did she respond to it?
Faith
Prathia Hall called it "freedom faith," a faith that has to be lived. Choose one moment from the chapter (Coretta Scott King after the bombing, Anna Arnold Hedgeman after Birmingham, Unita Blackwell standing up) and describe what her faith asked of her.
Personal
Whose story in this chapter was new to you? Where did you first learn the story of the civil rights movement, and who was missing from that telling?
Our congregation
These women built and sustained institutions: the NCNW, the YWCA, a church commission, a town government. What behind-the-scenes work does our congregation depend on, who does it, and who gets named from the front?
Accountability
Celeste Headlee ties freedom to literacy and education, and Unita Blackwell faced a literacy test at the registrar's office. Where, in Charlotte today, do people still face barriers to education or to the ballot, and what is one concrete step our class could take?
Closing: return to Luke 4:18
Ask the class: whose freedom work in this chapter will you carry with you this week?
Fact check
Claims from the chapter and the profiles where sources disagree or a note is needed.
Claim
Rating
Note
Prathia Hall's birth date
Disputed
Tisby gives June 29, 1940, matching the Freedom Faith biography. Wikipedia, the SNCC Digital Gateway and EBSCO give January 1, 1940. The year, 1940, is the same in every source.
Hall's "I have a dream" prayer inspired King
Plausible, based on oral history
Tisby himself hedges ("substantial evidence from oral history suggests"). It rests on testimony and on Courtney Pace's biography, not on a transcript. It is best read as a strong claim from oral history, not as settled fact.
The King holiday: "another three years" after the failed 1979 vote
Slightly imprecise
The 1979 House vote failed by five votes. The House passed the bill on August 2, 1983, and President Reagan signed it on November 2, 1983, so about four years later.
Ruby Dee "born in Ohio"
Correct, with more detail available
Cleveland, Ohio, on October 27, 1922 (Britannica).
Hedgeman recruited more than 40,000 white Protestants
Not independently confirmed
This figure is Tisby's. No second source for the number turned up, so treat it as his claim.
Unita Blackwell, first Black woman mayor in Mississippi
Correct
Confirmed by the Associated Press obituary and the Town of Mayersville. She served from 1976 to 2001.
Dorothy Height: Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal
Correct
1994 and 2004 (National Park Service). One BlackPast entry says both came in 2000, which appears to be an error.